Surprise! The New Season of Veronica Mars Dropped on Hulu a Week Early

From Oprah Magazine

• Hulu's Veronica Mars season 4 premieres on July 19. It was initially supposed to air on July 26 but they (surprise!) bumped their air date.

• Seasons one to three will be available to stream on Hulu on July 1st.

• Kristen Bell tells OprahMag.com that you'll see a "different Logan" this season.

Veronica Mars, UPN/CW’s cult hit series about a whip-smart teen detective starring Kristen Bell, will soon return with brand-new episodes. If that news makes you want to listen to The Dandy Warhols’ “We Used to Be Friends”—a.k.a. the original show’s theme song—on repeat out of sheer joy, you’re not alone: In the years since the three-season drama aired its finale in 2007, fans’ insatiable demand for Veronica’s further adventures have spawned a Kickstarter-funded feature film and two novels. With a built-in audience this passionate, it’s no wonder Hulu has picked up a fourth season set to premiere this summer.

New photos from the Veronica Mars revival find Veronica to her old private detective tricks—including lightly tampering with goods in the grocery store aisle, and bantering with her dad Keith at Mars Investigations HQ. We also get a glimpse of new character Penn Epner, played by Patton Oswalt.

And then there's the photographic evidence of Logan and Veronica's domestic bliss, all cozied up on the couch. As Bell confirmed to OprahMag, the two are definitely together, and there's a "really new, fresh, interesting dynamic" between the two.

"Logan’s gone to a lot of therapy and is a great communicator, and Veronica is sort of stagnant in their relationship," says Bell, who prior to this revival was "was not 100 percent Team Logan.Because if Veronica were my daughter or my best friend, I’d want her to be with someone who doesn’t have as many…issues that haven’t been worked through as Logan. But this is a different Logan."

Check out the new photos below.

Read on for everything else we know so far about Veronica Mars season 4—and if you skipped the movie and books, mild spoilers ahead.

When does the new Veronica Mars premiere on Hulu?

Veronica Mars was supposed to be released on July 26, 2019, but in exciting fashion, Hulu dropped the season on July 19 so you get an entire extra weekend for binge watching enjoyment. The season will consist of 8 one-hour episodes, and the first episode is titled “Spring Break Forever.”

Is there a trailer?

Yes. The first official trailer debuted on May 1, and it came chock full of morsels for Marshmallows to obsess over. "When your best friend is murdered before your 17th birthday, you don't develop a keen sense of mercy," Veronica says in the opening voiceover, effectively summing up the show and the character's origin story in one sentence.

Then Ronnie neatly takes care of a would-be mugger with her taser, and Instagrams it just for funsies. That's our girl!We learn a lot in the minute-long video: Veronica and Jason Dohring's Logan (or LoVe, as they're known to fans that've root for them since Season 1) are still very much together after their reunion in the Veronica Mars movie, and the town of Neptune is somehow more dangerous than ever. Still heading up Mars Investigations, Keith Mars has been tasked with finding the culprits behind a bombing attack on a hotel full of spring breakers.

The trailer brought our first glimpse of the show's new characters played by Patton Oswalt, J.K. Simmons, Killing Eve's Kirby Howell-Baptiste and Clifton Collins Jr., who seems to be at least partly behind Neptune's rising body count. It also teases a steamy love scene between Veronica and Logan, as well as proof that despite his grown military man status, Logan still can't resist a good fist fight. Dohring's also gotten super buff in the years since the original show, and you can watch for thirst traps on his brand new Instagram account.

Watch the Veronica Mars trailer below.

Is the original cast returning?

Most of the core cast is back! Kristen Bell’s devotion to her breakthrough role remains unwavering, despite a busy schedule including NBC sitcom The Good Place and a little Disney franchise known as Frozen. Enrico Colantoni is set to return as Veronica's father Keith Mars, and so are Percy Daggs III (Wallace Fennel), Francis Capra (Eli "Weevil" Navarro), Daran Norris (Cliff McCormack) and Ryan Hansen (Dick Casablancas). Ken Marino will be back as sleazy rival detective Vinny van Lowe. Jason Dohring (Logan) and Max Greenfield (Leo D’Amato) are also on board. So far there’s no sign of Tina Majorino as computer genius Mac—which is disappointing, since Mac rocks, and she’s basically Veronica’s only female friend.

There are notable new additions to the cast, too.

Comedian Patton Oswalt joins the cast as Penn Epner, a 40-something pizza delivery guy and “frequent poster on unsolved murder websites,” Deadline reports. Oscar winner J.K. Simmons has been cast as shady ex-con Clyde Pickett. Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Bell’s Good Place costar, will play Nicole, owner of a club popular with Neptune spring breakers. Westworld’s Clifton Collins Jr., The Fosters’ Izabela Vidovic, and Dawnn Lewis (a.k.a. Jaleesa from A Different World!) will also recur.

Creator Rob Thomas shared a peek at the revival's cast from the first table read back in November.

Hulu's revival will be "much darker" than the movie.

“I will say this: the movie was nostalgic. The Hulu limited series isn't going to be,” Rob Thomas wrote on Twitter shortly after Hulu first announced the project. “Hardcore So-Cal noir. One big case. Eight episodes to tell the story. This is a detective show.”

While the series, books and movie always dealt with heavy topics including sexual assault and suicide, Bell confirms that things will somehow get “much darker.”

“It’s going to be a bigger world. It’s definitely not what we did on UPN or the CW, so I want to brace fans for that—that it’s going to be darker and bigger and more cinematic, and definitely a little bit different,” the actress told Entertainment Weekly’s Sirius XM show. Consider us braced.

What's the new season about?

According to Hulu’s description, "Spring breakers are getting murdered in Neptune, thereby decimating the seaside town’s lifeblood tourist industry. After Mars Investigations is hired by the parents of one of the victims to find their son’s killer, Veronica is drawn into a mystery that pits the enclave’s wealthy elites, who would rather put an end to the month-long bacchanalia, against a working class that relies on the cash influx that comes with being the West Coast’s answer to Daytona Beach.” New show, same familiar class-war themes.

Where does the Veronica Mars book series fit in?

Taking place five years after the 2014 movie, this central mystery does sound a bit like the plot of the first Veronica Mars novel, The Thousand Dollar Tan Line. But Thomas maintains that it will be a fresh tale, tweeting that the books are “98% canon.”

Marcia Langdon and Pony—a puppy adopted by Logan—were both introduced in the pages of novel #2, Mr. Kiss and Tell. The end of that book also teased a potential love triangle between Veronica, on-again/off-again love Logan and her cop-turned-FBI agent ex Max, though whether that’ll play out onscreen remains to be seen.

The ace writing staff includes...Kareem Abdul Jabbar?

It’s true, and not as weird as it sounds: A vocal member of Bachelor Nation, the basketball legend has covered the show for the Hollywood Reporter in addition to co-writing books and a comic book series about Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes. The writers’ room will also include Heather V. Regnier and Diane Ruggiero, writer and co-creator of Thomas’s other (fantastic) show iZombie respectively, and David Walpert, who’s written for another Kristen Bell series, House of Lies.

How can I rewatch previous seasons (or watch Veronica Mars for the very first time) ahead of the premiere?

You can stream the series on Amazon Prime and iTunes right this very minute, and Hulu subscribers can catch up on Juluy

Oh, one more thing: Why are Veronica Mars fans called Marshmallows?

It’s a reference to a line in the series’ pilot, in which Veronica’s new friend Wallace sees right through her gruff exterior and sums her character up in one iconic monologue: “Underneath that angry young woman shell, there's...a slightly less angry young woman who's just dying to bake me something. You're a marshmallow, Veronica Mars. A twinkie!”

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